Introduction
There
are reports that France has sent its first troops officially to Ukraine with
soldiers drawn from France’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, which is one of the main
elements of France’s Foreign Legion (Légion étrangère), being deployed in
support of the Ukrainian 54th Independent Mechanised Brigade in Slovyansk as
per the Russian news service Sputnik, reported by Stephen Bryan in Asia Times.
While there is another Russian report, that claims the Ukrainian Brigade
receiving these reinforcements is not the 54th but the 7th
Mechanised Brigade. The initial group of French troops is reported to number
around 100 out of around 1,500 French Foreign Legion soldiers scheduled to be
deployed in Ukraine. Deploying these troops directly in the active combat area is
probably intended to help the Ukrainians resist Russian advances in Donbas. The
first 100 Legionnaires are believed to be artillery and surveillance
specialists.
On
03 May, TASS quoted Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova who
said; "New information is emerging about the preparation by Paris of a
military contingent to be sent to Ukraine. To this end, the command of the
French Foreign Legion in early March approved the makeup of a battalion
tactical group of about 1,500 people. It is expected that in April the group
will be brought to full combat readiness for an operational deployment to the
Ukrainian theatre of military operations".[1]
However,
in France on 06 May France denied sending troops to Ukraine, dismissing ongoing
Russian reports as a ‘Disinformation Campaign’. "No, France did not send
troops to Ukraine," the Foreign Ministry said in a post on X, replying to
recent reports about the deployment of the French Foreign Legion to Ukraine.[2]
French
Foreign Legion
The
French Foreign Legion was founded in 1831 and is still in service. The Legion
today is run by French officers, but the rank and file are generally
foreigners. Under the current anonymat (Being Anonymous) rule, a
volunteer who joins the Legion can decide whether to keep his given name or
adopt a new one. Legionnaires serve for five-year terms, after which they can ask
for French citizenship. If a legionnaire is wounded, he is entitled to gain
French citizenship without any waiting period.
It
isn’t clear how the Legionnaires can help the Ukrainians apart from boosting
their morale. Ukraine has access to sophisticated intelligence support, both by
their drones and also due to US and other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
intelligence and surveillance assets including satellites. As far as artillery
is concerned, gunners are not the problem, but the main issue is the
availability of 155mm ammunition as Ukraine continues to complain that it lacks
adequate supplies.
Incidentally,
soon after the invasion Ukraine raised the International Legion of Territorial
Defence of Ukraine (also known as the Ukrainian International Legion or
Ukrainian Foreign Legion) drawing thousands of sympathetic volunteers largely
from the West and post-Soviet states.[3] The
International Legion has been deployed across the front lines and in some of
the war’s toughest battles. It comprises a mixture of idealists, retired
military personnel, and mercenaries. Some of whom have earned social media fame
for their dispatches from the war zone.
Following
concerns over troop shortages, in February President Volodymyr Zelensky issued
a decree allowing foreign nationals legally residing in the country to enter
Ukraine’s National Guard. He also proposed legislation in January making it
easier for foreign nationals defending Ukraine to receive citizenship.[4]
Other volunteer Brigades fighting for Ukraine include detachments of Belarusian
fighters opposed to the government in Minsk, anti-Kremlin Russians and
ethnically Turkic nationals from Russia, and post-Soviet states like Kazakhstan
and Kyrgyzstan.
Perceived
Reasons and Risks for the Changed French Stance
For
months, French President Emanuel Macron has been threatening to send French
troops to Ukraine. He has found little or no support from NATO countries
outside of support from Poland and the Baltic States. In an interview with The
Economist, President Macron stated, “I’m not ruling anything out, because we
are facing someone who is not ruling anything out”. "We have undoubtedly
been too hesitant by defining the limits of our action to someone who no longer
has any and who is the aggressor", he continued and said he'd consider
sending French troops to Ukraine "If the Russians were to break through
the front lines, if there were a Ukrainian request, which is not the case
today".[5]
France
itself does not have many regular troops to be deployed on Ukraine’s battlefields,
should the French government want to do so. According to reports, France cannot
support an overseas deployment of a full division and won’t have this
capability until 2027 at the earliest. A
decision to send Foreign Legionnaires should therefore be seen as an unusual
compromise as France is not deploying its regular army and, besides the small
number of officers, the men sent mostly not French citizens.
France’s
decision also allows President Macron to send troops to Ukraine without
encountering much domestic opposition. With few French citizens being sent and
with the lack of conscription or other measures in the offing, it is unlikely that
there will be protests against the deployment.
There
has also been French anger after most of the French troops, mainly from the Foreign
Legion, suffered a setback in Sahelian Africa namely Mali, Burkina Faso and
Niger and were replaced by Russians. A string of coups in the region since 2020
and the consequent rise in anti-French sentiments among the people saw
relations nosedive with France and pivot towards greater rapprochement with
Russia. A five-country alliance, the G-5 Sahel, that partnered with France to
fight terrorism across desolate territory South of the Sahara, has all but
collapsed. The remaining members, Chad and Mauritania, feel its dissolution is
near.[6] This
‘Humiliation’ as per President Macron’s opponents has lost France its influence
and harmed French overseas mining and business interests.
In
2022, France was also the leading importer of Russian nuclear industry products,
with 359 million EUR worth of imports a jump of more than 250 per cent compared
to 2021. According to a report by Greenpeace published in March 2023, the
transit routes for natural uranium from Kazakhstan run through Russia and show
that Russian influence is more extensive than the companies in the sector would
have us believe. Given the risk of losing access to uranium, or at least enough
of it to supply France’s reactors, Macron has to hope that his troop
deployments to Ukraine won’t trigger a Russian embargo on sales to France.
A
decision to put the Legion soldiers in Slovyansk is provocative and goes
against statements from the French side, including President Macron, to the
effect that if France sent troops, they would replace Ukrainian Army units in Western
Ukraine who could, therefore, be moved Eastward to fight the Russians. As Slovyansk
is on the front line, this French deployment is turning into a war with Russia
directly.[7]
Key
Questions That Need to Be Answered
One
of the questions to immediately arise from France’s decision to send soldiers
from its 3rd Infantry Regiment is whether this crosses the Russian red line on
NATO involvement in Ukraine? Will the Russians see this as initiating a wider
war beyond Ukraine’s borders?
A
key question is also how NATO will react to the French decision to deploy. As
France is acting on its own without NATO’s backing, can the French claim
support from NATO under its famous Article 5, the collective defence component
of the NATO Treaty?
The
open use of military means outside of NATO is associated with risks. Should the
Russians attack French troops outside of Ukraine they could justify their
actions on the grounds that France has decided to be a combatant. But for
France forcing an Article 5 response from NATO members may not be easy. Of
course, NATO members individually could support the French, by supporting them with
intelligence, communications, and logistics. For example, Foreign Legion
soldiers cannot go to Ukraine without passing through Poland.
More
than two years into the Ukrainian war, the French rhetoric has changed significantly,
and some analysts believe that this change is permanent. But does this change
in French strategic thinking create a window of opportunity to redesign the
European security order?
President
Macron’s agenda has been the quest for ‘European Strategic Autonomy’. This
means defining European strategy based on European interests and equipping
Europe with the tools to act independently in defence of its security and
sovereignty. Paris now believes this goal requires constructing a European
security order without, and more precisely against, Russia.
Conclusion
Presently,
no one can answer any of these questions with any degree of certainty. Russia
has responded by announcing tactical nuclear weapon drills that target “Provocative
statements and threats from certain Western officials”.[8] There’s
no immediate need for Western troops to take on combat roles by deploying
‘boots on the ground’ as the implications are manifold and can result in a
wider conflict. They can help with providing intelligence, supplies of weapons,
logistics, and training and can free Ukrainian troops from these tasks, thereby
freeing Ukrainian troops.
While
some analysts argue that the deeper reality of the war in Ukraine is that there
already are plenty of foreign fighters, the fact is that they are there in
their individual capacity and not representing their governments. Most are
motivated by an economic need and not by the fact that they are defending a
flag. But the fact remains that while the war presently has settled into some
sort of stalemate, foreign soldiers being deployed on Ukrainian frontlines can
upset the equilibrium and precipitate tensions regarding a wider conflict that
will have reaching global implications.
Endnotes
[1] TASS, “France Could Bring
to Combat Readiness 1,500 Troops for Ukraine in April — Russian MFA.” TASS,
April 3, 2024.
[2] Goldin, Melissa. “No,
France Did Not Deploy Troops to Fight with Ukraine against Russia | AP News.”
AP News, May 6, 2024.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-french-troops-russia-ukraine-deployed-994039088319.
[3] Royal United Services
Institute. “Why Foreign Volunteers Enlist in the Ukrainian International
Legion,” n.d.
[4]
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. “Zelenskiy Proposes Bill Allowing Ukrainian
Citizenship For Foreign Fighters,” January 22, 2024.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-foreign-fighters-citizenship-zelensky/32786522.html.
[5] The Economist. “Emmanuel Macron in His Own Words (English),” May 2, 2024. https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/05/02/emmanuel-macron-in-his-own-words-english.
[6] Jazeera, Al. “Chad, Mauritania
Pave Way for Dissolution of G5 Sahel Alliance.” Al Jazeera, December 6, 2023.
[7] Bryen, Stephen. “France Sends Troops to Ukraine: Russian Report.” Asia Times, May 10, 2024. https://asiatimes.com/2024/05/france-sends-combat-troops-to-ukraine-battlefront/.
[8] Anna Chernova and Christian
Edwards, Putin orders tactical nuclear weapons drills in response to Western
‘threats’, CNN World, 7 May 2024, Date accessed on- 22 May 2024.
Putin
orders tactical nuclear weapons drills in response to Western ‘threats’ | CNN
Major General Jagatbir Singh, VSM (Retd) is a Distinguished Fellow at the USI of India. Commissioned in 1981 into the 18 Cavalry, he has held various important command and Staff appointments including command of an Armoured Division.
This article has been originally published at FIRSTPOST.
Article uploaded on 22-05-2024
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the organisation that he belongs to or of the USI of India.